2001 Topps Chrome "Before There was Topps" refractors

Y'all know I like refractors. Well, one niche that especially interests me are guys' 1st Refractor, specifically talking about old-timers who played before such parallels were a thing. And in poking around, I found this 10-card "Before There was Topps" insert set from 2001 Chrome that features the first refractor produced of several inner-circle HOFers, and so I went about completing it. Took me a couple years, but I tracked them all down, paying about $10-20 per card. The base versions typically run a buck or two, but the refractors were tougher pulls-- 1:200 odds compared to 1:20 for base (per baseballcardpedia).

They didn't go too nuts in imagining what a Topps design from way back then would look like, going with a simplified 1959 Topps design with the photo circle in the middle. If this "what if" set came out today, chances are the pictures would be artificially colorized, but back in 2001, at least, Topps went old-school and kept the photos black and white.

With all these household names, you'd never guess what ended up being the final card I needed to track down. If you can believe it, it was Grover, who one might argue is the least-remembered of these 10 men today if you were forced to rank them. Hey, that gives me an idea, let's use TCDb to see which of these legends has the most cards out there as of May 2025.

#1 with 16,275 cards - Babe Ruth

Might as well do the list in descending order, since Babe Ruth having the most cards surely isn't a surprise. He's the original GOAT and still well-known today despite his heyday being a century ago.

I'd pick full stats over a little write-up any day, so I'm happy with these backs. Neat to see the Boston bookends to the Bambino's career.

#2 with 5,518 cards - Lou Gehrig

Quite a drop in card volume, with second-place Lou Gehrig having over 10,000 fewer cards out there than Ruth.

Great career ended by a tragic disease.

#3 Joe DiMaggio, Total Cards: 4,822

Yankee supremacy continues with Joe DiMaggio in third place.

I always thought it was a bummer that Joltin' Joe narrowly missed getting a playing-days Topps card.

#4 Ty Cobb, Total Cards: 4,729

Cobb just missed third place with less than one hundred fewer cards currently on the market than DiMaggio.

Ty Cobb still gets talked about a lot today, though it's often in conversations regarding Pete Rose. While he might not have the "Hit King" crown these days, check out that insane lifetime average.

#5 Honus Wagner, Total Cards: 3,189

Honus Wagner places fifth out of these fellas in terms of cards produced of their likeness.

Honus Wagner is best known in the hobby for his T206 SSP that's considered the all-time "best baseball card" to many. But yeah, he was a pretty good player, too! Not a lot of pop, but hey, that's pre-Ripken shortstops for you, right?

#6 Rogers Hornsby, Total Cards: 2,361

From Honus to Hornsby. Took me a while to notice the subtle lines of stars in the design.

More teams on the back than we've seen in the post so far. Hornsby was player/manager for most of the latter half of his career, which helps explain sticking around with limited action as his career wound down.

#7 Christy Mathewson, Total Cards: 1,423

The remaining players in this list are all pitchers. Christy Mathewson is arguably the greatest pitcher of all time, though his 1,423 different cards on the market are dwarfed by, say, Roger Clemens (19,958), but that's modern cards for you.

Imagine guys today pitching that many innings!

#8 Walter Johnson, Total Cards: 1,190

Walter Johnson is among the 3 graded cards in my completed set. I got the trio from COMC, though not all at once. I don't particularly want them graded, but I haven't been motivated to break them out either.

His total of 110 career shutouts is the record. One of those firmly unbreakable records.. at least until robot pitchers are legalized in 2063.

#9 Cy Young, Total Cards: 1,021

Cy Young is mentioned plenty today thanks largely to MLB's pitcher-of-the-year award being named after him. Barely a thousand different cards of him out there, though.

Tons of wins and losses. Cool seeing forgotten teams Spiders and Naps on the back.

Last at #10 Grover Alexander, Total Cards: 480

As I suspected, Grover Cleveland "Pete" Alexander does have the fewest cards out of the 10 players in this insert set. Less than 500 cards means he's not even halfway to the #9 spot.

30+ wins.. 3 years in a row.. Can you imagine?!

And that wraps it up. Nice group of shiny cards featuring all-time greats.

After completing this set, I decided I should go after the "What Could Have Been" refractors, also from 2001 Chrome, basically a similar 10-card set but with Negro League players. I don't have any of those yet, but I'm keeping an eye out.

Thanks for stopping by.

Rod roundup

Rod at Padrographs has been distributing cards around again and I was fortunate enough to have him swing by the other weekend with a stack for me. I've pulled out a few highlights for blog post.

Here's a big Devers, a regular Devers, and a big (but not as big) Gunnar Henderson RC. 

Some additions to the Bryce Harper PC, including another of those awkward to store Master Photo cards.

A few standouts of the several Padres cards in the lot.

More rising stars of the NL.

This book about baseball movies looks interesting, and it pulled double duty by keeping the oversized cards safe during transit.

Lastly, a fresh pair of Sheets. Gavin's 2025 cards have to this point still featured him in his Chicago duds, making me wait for the personal double-bullseye of a Padres-Gavin card. But Rod whipped up a terrific custom to tide me over until an official version hits the market.

Thank you muchly, Rod!

Stacking Plates

I've scored myself 3 printing plates in the past few months and I figured I'd round them up into a post.

Here's big Dave Winfield bursting out of the batter's box. I'm always keeping an eye on active Topps Retired auctions, mainly searching for 'dem sweet /25 refractor autos, but sometimes I stumble upon other cool stuff, such as a reasonably priced printing plate of one of my main PC guys.

A cyan plate of a Blue Jays card counts as a color match, don't it?

Well, howbout a magenta plate of a Cardinals card?

Khalil Greene played during years I wasn't collecting cards, but I specifically recall thinking to myself that he's a guy I'd be all over if I were collecting at the time. An interesting young kid on the Padres who came up big occasionally but ultimately never quite fulfilled his promise of being a good MLBer. After I got back into collecting a few years later, I started putting together a respectable PC of his cards, helping remind me of that era of Padres baseball, as well as my "lost years" out of the hobby.

2009 Topps is Khalil's sunset card. The Padres had just traded him away to St. Louis, though the change of scenery sadly didn't help his numbers. That was his last season in baseball despite an impressive spring training with his new club, to the point where he was batting clean-up on Opening Day behind Albert Pujols, but Khalil's problem seems to be that he put too much pressure on himself and couldn't turn the page, to the point of self-harm. Perhaps if he was coming up today, there would be more mental health assistance available and his career might've turned out differently.

Last guy for today is another Padres fan favorite..

After a long wait, I finally scored another Bip Roberts autographed plate! Yep, 2014 Topps Archives included Bip in their Fan Favorites Autographs checklist. Giddy with this development, I smashed buy-it-now on a base auto on the product release day and I've been building the rainbow ever since.

Back in June 2014, I traded with former blogger ARPSmith for the magenta plate that he pulled. A few months later in November 2014, I scored the yellow plate on eBay. Then a decade went by with no progress until the cyan plate popped up just last November. Now there's just the black plate left to try tracking down.

Turns out there also a 1/1 red parallel (non-plate) that I also need to complete the rainbow. And dang it, I haven't been keeping an eye out for that, so it's probably too late by this point. But whatever, I'm more interested in the printing plate quadfecta.

The following year, 2015, Topps put Bip into Stadium Club (with the sombrero, but no autos). Those are the only two instances to date of Topps showing the Bipper any post-career love. But I guess I shouldn't complain, because if they put out more Bip autos I'd probably have to buy them all. lol

Anybody know what Bip is up to these days, by the way? Last I heard he was a part of the extended broadcast team in Oakland, but that was a while ago, and now Oakland doesn't even have a team anymore.

Speaking of Bip, I skimmed a recent Pitchfork article about how "Bip" is a hip slang word on the rise. The writer failed to mention Mr. Roberts nor bipping as "surprising someone with several copies of the same trading card", as we on the cardsphere know it, but rather among several possibilities, could mean "conducting illicit transactions, driving around smoothly while conducting those illicit transactions, or just masterfully driving in general. [...] In its other, more benign definitions, getting “bipped up” means you’ve gotten a fresh haircut or hairstyle."

Safe bippin' out there, y'all!